A huge thank you to the Jersey Evening Post who published my opinion piece on the 23rd May 2025.
If you missed the original piece in the paper, here it is below:
In 2018, Jersey got the Sexual Offences Law, which the UK in 2003. My arguement is that it was 15 years too late
I write this article in response to Kate Wright’s recent article about how the landscape of Jersey’s ‘untouchable system.’
What did you think of this when you read it? Did you agree? Or were you in uproar that someone dared to voice such an opinion, especially when it comes to sexual violence in the island.
Do you think that sexual violence isn’t a problem over here? And that the recent VAWG report was just a waste of time?
If you sit in the latter camp, I want to ask you a question: When is a fish more important than a woman?
Whilst you mull over that question, let’s dive into a bit of history.
It’s 2003. In the UK, the Sexual Offences Law is passed. And in Jersey, we passed 33 pieces of legislation that I could find on the Jersey Law website. Among legislation concerning broadcasting, terrorism, employment, and driving licenses, there are 2 pieces of legislation surrounding fishing.
Now, don’t get me wrong, fishing is important to the Jersey economy (or so I assume as I don’t eat sea food). It accounts for adding millions of pounds to the economy every year, after all.
However, in 2003, and the years preceding, Jersey missed an opportunity to put in place legislation that mirrored the UK legislation.
And whilst you might think to yourself, ‘Well, we got the legislation in 2018. That’s only a 15 year wait – not bad for Jersey, eh?’ My arguement is that it was 15 years too late.
You see, it meant that until 2018, it was still legal to rape your wife. Until 2018, it was legal to sexually touch someone as long as you didn’t rape them. Until 2018, it was legal to groom a minor without repercussion. Until 2018, what two men did to me was perfectly legal.
What this meant was that when I was sexually assaulted, on different occasions and by two different men, I had nowhere to go with it. When I reported one of the events in 2024, the police investigated but ultimately had to close that case because the events I’d reported happened prior to 2018. If he’d done what he did post-2018, it would have been illegal and they could have arrested him. Incidentally, it happened before 2018 and therefore there is no crime to be investigated.
He still lives in Jersey. For legal reasons, I can’t name him, or give any information that could lead to his identification. But he’s still over here with a seemingly untarnished reputation.
Once that case was closed, I asked the police about officially reporting the incidents with the other person. Again, because these events were prior to 2018, in the eyes of the law, there was no crime committed. This was heart breaking to hear; especially as similar circumstances had seen someone else be prosecuted in recent years. Again, I cannot name this person or describe them in a way which will mean that they can be identified. But again, they still live over here. And like the other person, you wouldn’t be able to guess what they’ve done, or capable of in the past, if you passed them in town tomorrow.
So this then leads me to wondering; how many other people in Jersey are just like me. With their perpetrators still living among us with no repercussions for their actions because they occurred before the 2018 Sexual Offences legislation was put in place? How many women worry when they go out in public that they might bump into someone who once did something to them? How many women have to live with the knowledge that they will never see justice for what a perpetrator did because what happened occurred prior to 2018?
Where’s the justice? Where’s the resolve? Where’s the upholding of my Human Rights? I endure nightmares, panic attacks, and other symptoms that relate to PTSD. Yet there’s no sense of justice that I can get. My motivation for writing this piece, and to relate it back to Kate’s article about the ‘untouchable system,’ is that being untouchable goes much further than just who you know. You’re also untouchable depending on when you sexually assaulted someone. Because, as with me, if it happened pre-2018, it likely wasn’t illegal.
This piece hasn’t been written to blame any services; but to act as a wake-up call to people in power and people who have an opportunity to make change happen. The States of Jersey Police (in my experience) were fantastic. But they can only enact the legislation that is in place.
Services such as JDAS and JAAR are also amazing; I honestly don’t know where I’d be without both of them. But both need to continue to receive appropriate funding to deal with the waiting lists and number of people they’re supporting.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get someone with the ability to change legislation to make what happened to me illegal. It’d open a flood gate for so many people to be investigated that I don’t think that the system would cope.
But what I can ask, is for the Island to wake up to the issue that VAWG is, not just now, but previously as well. We need more specific legislation around matters such as non-fatal strangulation, and better sentences for those found guilty of sexual offences. We need women and girls who come forward to feel that they’ve got the justice that they deserve.
And with that, I’ll return to my original question at the beginning of this piece. When is a fish more important than a woman? The answer is this: When it’s 2003, and you’re in Jersey.
